Just thought you should know that as of this morning, Unreasonable Faith has received over 100,000 comments. Way to go, folks!

If you decide to throw a party, just make sure you clean up all the beer bottles before Daniel gets back.

For the record, that’s 100,000 “approved” comments, so it doesn’t count spam or comments that we delete. That’s important, because the recent Facts aren’t Enough post has received over 600 trackbacks from spamblogs so far. I have no idea why.

Daniel checked in to say that he’ll be out of touch for a week, because he’s driving across the country.

He didn’t say why he was driving across the country. My theory is that he’s on the run.

Maybe all the churches he designed websites for have now found out that he’s an atheist, and they’re all after him to get their money back from the heathen.

Right now, Daniel is now flying down the interstate, with a dozen church mini-vans in hot pursuit.

He’s staying ahead of them, but only because they have to stop once a day and hold a bake sale in order to pay for gas.

Anyway, that’s my theory. He’ll be back in a week.

‘Tis the tenth anniversary of my marriage, and according to my co-workers this is when it all start to go downhill. (working in a house full of divorced women has it’s downsides)

I’m going to go off and enjoy the good times while they last, so I’ll be out of the loop for a couple days. Ya’ll don’t make trouble for Daniel.

I have achieved a minor milestone — this will be my one hundredth post on Unreasonable Faith. That’s one hundred posts in almost exactly a year — my first post was on March 2nd of last year. That’s hardly a record — and Daniel has something over a thousand — but it’s not bad for someone who just sort of stumbled into the process of blogging.

So, while I catch my breath, open thread. What sorts of posts do you want to see going forward?

• Announcements
• Welcome / Introduce Yourself
• Feedback

Religion

• General Religion Discussion
• In the News
• Questions for Atheists
• Questions for Theists
• Religion / Cult Recovery
• Evangelism
  If you’re trying to convert someone to your religion or philosophy, do it here.

General

• Science & Education
• Humor
• Skepticism / Pseudo-science / Paranormal
• Politics
• Technology & Internet
• In the News

For Atheists/Agnostics Members Only

• General Discussion
• Humor
• Religion
• Science

There is a free 14-day trial, and after that it’s $1.99 a month (unfortunately they only give 30% of that to the publishers).

Also, even if you don’t have a Kindle, I’d really appreciate it if you reviewed the blog over at Amazon. Thanks everyone!

You can do this when you comment or without commenting. Just scroll down to the comment form on a post to use this feature.

It fits almost double the comments in the same amount of space. Here is an example showing the general difference. 

New (left) vs old (right):

Hope you like it — enjoy!

1. There is no way to put all the comments on one page.
2. Threads are collapsed by default and there is no way to modify it.
3. No comment preview.
4. No way to link to comment.
5. Slows down page load time.

I still really want a voting feature though. Oh well, maybe in the future!

What’s New

Here is an overview of what has changed:

• The site is now wider. This gives more room for the sidebar and the content.
• Larger/wider youtube videos.
• Sidebar tabs. This lets me squeeze more content in without clutter.
• New color scheme, header photo, and tagline.
• New featured section on homepage. Gives a quick “about” and also lets me feature a post that will change regularly.

Known bugs:

• Comment threading isn’t displaying for previous posts, but is working for new posts. Hopefully this will get fixed.

Coming Soon: UF Forum

Now that I have my own hosting, I’ll be creating a forum. This is where the UF community can hang out and talk about whatever they want. Readers can create their own topics and share what they’re thinking. It’ll be great!

I’ll need a few moderators to keep a watch on things. It would require checking the forums throughout the day and being a peacekeeper. If you’re interested, please contact me.

What Do You Think?

Let me know what you think about the new design. Personally I feel it is much stronger. I know it’ll take a little getting used to for some of you. But I hope you like it!

Update: If you’re reading this, you’re on the new site! Unfortunately not everything is working right yet — like threaded comments. I’m still trying to sort some of this out. Thanks for your patience!

Update 2: If there are any Wordpress experts out there, I could use your help. Everything imported from Wordpress.com correctly except the comments. They are not threading in any of the old posts, yet on new posts threading works. In the database the comments look fine and the comment_parent ID’s match up with the parent. But they are not displaying under the parent. If anyone has an ideas about this, please let me know.

I’ve opened comments back up for the last couple weeks of posts. Unfortunately the others will be closed until we move over to the new site.

Thanks everyone for your patience!

* * *

I’m currently switching over to the new design and hosting. I’ve closed all comments so that nothing is lost in the transfer. It will take a few hours for things to be normal again. I’ll try and update this as things come along.

In the meantime, check out these blogs:

• Cynical-C
• Friendly Atheist
• J-Walk

Update 8pm: Ran into a domain transfer issue. I’m not able to change the nameservers since I’m in the middle of a transfer. I’ve contacted Wordpress support since the domain company they use won’t talk to me. This may end up stalling things until early next week, but I’m going forward with the import into the new blog in case support surprises me and can resolve this issue tonight.

Update 9:30pm: Have the new database imported. It wouldn’t import through phpmysql so I had to do it through SSH. Now I’m importing the comments into IntenseDebate which will probably take a while. The domain issue still isn’t looking good, though, so all this work may need to be done again if I have to wait a couple more days. Sigh.

Update: 10:30pm: IntenseDebate import is 25% complete. Still cannot change nameservers. And some DB glitch made all my youtube videos disappear which were working. Ugh.

I have a confession.

A few months ago, I thought it would be amusing to write comments from a different perspective. Someone who could speak mystically, make outrageous claims without evidence, and be completely impervious to logic and reason.

And thus John C was born.

I had no idea the community reaction would be so strong. A little joke turned into a full-time job. It may look simple to speak gibberish and quote the bible, but it’s not — especially when you’re doing it in 10-20 comments a day.

But it began taking over my life. My wife was angry and put her foot down: “Dan, if you don’t kill John C, I’m going to kill you.”

At last I gave in and wrote my farewell post. I decided to stop commenting on my 1,000 comment, which was coming up.

I have some favorites out of the 1,007 total comments I wrote. Here are a few:

Truth…is a Person, and so is the lie. So who you gonna believe? Christ or Self? Oneness…that’s the ultimate solution.

When someone declares “I am gay” it just makes me wonder, who told you that? Did God say? This is the same story in the garden deception…who told you? Did Father tell you that you are gay? Who we believe, who has our ear is key. The issue is one of identity, paternal lineage.

Daniel has asked me to coordinate the activities at the UnFaithCon. I thought we’d memorize OT scriptures, pray to Sky-God and sit around the camp fire roasting marshmellows while singing kumbaya all night? Does that works for you guys?

The uniting of spirits, His to mine is in the deeper still, spirit although my soul “houses” my spirit and the two can sometimes be referenced together being the (combined, whole) spiritual aspect of our being. You only know sir…what YOU know…but you can know Truth…Himself. There is more, there is a life.

Revisionist history…from folks with Phd’s…stands for Piled High & Deep.

How bout we let Him be who He is in and thru us so the world can know that Love…lives? That’s a better use of this very brief life, this spacetime nano second we have to inhabit this flesh realm, to make it count. Paradoxical paternity, its a trip!

It was indeed a trip. But the truth gnawed at me. How was I different from Pastor Chris, who I called out for impersonating an atheist? Here I was, an atheist, impersonating a Christian. The only difference was I hadn’t been caught.

So I’m coming clean. The truth is out!

What’s wrong with killing babies? I see no problem with it. I have enough mouths to feed. I don’t get the argument and I am an atheist. Since I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in anything characterized as good, bad / right, wrong. So, what’s the big deal?

At first I was shocked that anyone could say that. Then I realized that it must be a fundie in disguise, a sheep in wolves clothing. I wasn’t the only one — wintermute and Ty immediately called him out for “lying for Jesus.” They have good bullshit detectors.

So I did some digging, and I realized this deceiver was using a variety of names. At first he went under names like “grass,” “aatheist,” “apl,” and others. Here is an example of his initial comments:

It’s a rough world out there if you are not in fellowship with authentic Christians. It’s a very sweet fellowship where I am. Come join us!

Sorry for your past dealings with false believers and teachings….

Great thinkers and intellectuals have come to trust in Jesus and the Bible. I am trying to weigh everything to make a wise decision regarding Christianity. I hope others will join me….

The problem was, he wasn’t getting anywhere. Nobody was being convinced or converted. So he tried another tactic — impersonating atheists under different names to show how immoral and stupid they supposedly were. His first try was under “makeup”:

If a man wants to make a women his b****, so be it? So what if you don’t like it, what if I do?

If I want to do something, and my conscience is cool with it, then I can do it. If it’s feed a homeless person, so be it. If it’s kill my neighbor, so be it. I am not bound to any morals.

In a few hours, he went from apologizing for our past dealings with slimy lying Christians, to suggesting it’s okay to abuse women, kill neighbors, and slaughter children under the guise of atheism.

So I banned him. I found what he did to be disgusting. It would be like me pretending to me multiple Christians on a Christian blog, asserting there’s nothing wrong with raping women and killing children because God commands it in the Bible.

Who would do such a stupid thing?

It turns out, a pastor would. After some more digging, I was able to figure out the commenter’s identity: Pastor Chris Fox of Kendalls Baptist Church in New London, NC.

Way to lie for Jesus, pastor! I’m sure you make your congregation proud.

I confronted him about his deceitfulness. He apologized “for upsetting me,” but doesn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing. He said:

There were others who wanted to make comments and had ideas, and they simply wanted to share those in the forum; so for those remarks, my sincere apology.  I would also suggest attention given to the name-calling and other profanities used in various posts.

I was trying to make a point from a different perspective, of which I hear quite often, regarding morality and where it is derived.  There was a debate recently where some of the same questions were asked and were actually given an honest look and answer….

I am in no way a fundie or extremist.  Like you I believe in thinking, searching, asking questions, and hearing others from outside my box.  I thank you for your allowing various opinions and sides to share.

Isn’t it interesting that a pastor comes here to preach morality and salvation to us sinful atheists, but then lies about his identity numerous times in order to slander atheism — and even when caught, refuses to acknowledge he did anything wrong. He thinks the issue is censorship of ideas, when it it’s really disgust at his actions.

This site is open to people of all beliefs. John C can testify to that. But don’t lie and deceive to try and gain credibility for your ideas. It will backfire.

* * *

Update (4pm): Pastor Chris has sent me an email apologizing and said this has been a “lesson learned.” I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and have removed my ban. He is welcome to comment under his own identity.

Update (3/21): Chris is now commenting here under the nickname “CSF.” He has posted a formal apology:

I want to express to you how deeply sorry I am for coming on this site and making the remarks I did and violating my own faith. It was out of bounds. I allowed the “debater” part of me go too far. I messed up and I have come to ask for your forgiveness. Thank you for allowing me back on.

Chris, thank you for apologizing and admitting you were wrong. I really appreciate that. You took this the best way possible, and I admire that.

We all do stupid things. What’s important is we admit it and move on, like you have done. I hope you’ll stick around!